Thursday, November 3, 2011

Arthur Catterall and William Murdoch

Arthur Catterall

This is to be the first of three posts dealing with uploads I originally offered in 2007-08, featuring the British violinist Arthur Catterall (1883-1943). Here are three sonata recordings he made in 1923-24 with the Australian pianist William Murdoch (1888-1942). The first is an abridged version of Beethoven's "Spring" Sonata:

This recording was intended as a replacement for an earlier version by Albert Sammons (also with Murdoch at the piano) that had been issued five years earlier with the same record numbers. Catterall undertook a number of such re-recordings in June of 1923, not just of violin repertoire but also of piano trio movements with Murdoch and cellist W. H. Squire. Presumably Sammons was persona non grata at Columbia in 1923, as he was then making records for Vocalion!

The following were not planned as replacements, but as brand-new recordings:

The Franck was issued only in America, and even then it took two tries to get it right! The original issue, Masterworks Set No. 23, had been of only three of the work's four movements, and out of order to boot.

About Me

I have been collecting 78-rpm records since childhood. In 2007, I began a hobby of transferring some of these to digital files, and in 2010 I established this blog as a forum for sharing these with a wider audience.

Downloading Audio Files

All audio files posted on this blog can be downloaded by clicking on the word "Link" at the appropriate place. The link will take you to a file hosting service, where you will be given a download link to a ZIP file. When your computer asks you if you would rather open or save this file, choose "save" and save it to your computer, then use an unZIPping program to extract the audio and other files.